Blue
by chasingfireflies
Summary: Freedom was a long way from this place. He couldn’t remember what fresh air tasted like. -- oneshot


**In the event wherein Chuck is successfully extracted by Agent Longshore at the end of 1.13 (vs. the Marlin). **

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"_I'll save you later."_

The place is all white walls, white floors, white doors, white shirts, and just… _white_. White everything.

The lights never go off. He knows from experience.

The facility's actually a lot like something straight out of a horror movie, really. Most of the time the whole place is deathly silent, and seems completely deserted. Because everything's white, it makes the whole place seem kind of ethereal. Everything melds together – walls, floor, white-clothed bodies – and it's all fairly fuzzy by extension.

Walking through, it all seems to have that kind of holy glow associated with movie scenes in heaven, but this place, he knows, is anything but. You can't see it in the bright white rooms, but there's been bright red in there. Then the white coats came with their white cloths and wiped it all away. He tries not to think about those things.

He can only tell the boundaries of rooms and hallways by the fairly indistinct lines of structure connections. He can see the difference between wall and floor when it's close to him, but if he looks into a distance it all melds together. Mostly, everything's smooth.

And white. Very, very white.

He sees the white coats a lot. He doesn't know how long he's been there, but they've been with him for about as long. He doesn't know their individual features, because they all look exactly the same. Same general height, same skin tone, same intentions. They all do the same job, too, which started with showing him pictures and progressed to examining him. They were very thorough, too. They liked their shiny silver tools, and when they introduced those, well… that was when the memories of red and the memories of white collided.

He saw other faces once – not white coats. They'd been just like him – dressed down in the same white ensembles. He'd been lively then. They'd all been dull-eyed and defeated, and he'd scoffed at the thought of that being his future.

But he'd only seen them in the beginning, and then he'd been confined. Away from different colours, and different shapes, he'd forgotten their faces, and he'd forgotten his own. He really only remembered white and red.

He remembers fuzzy things from before the white walls – meshed colours, and vague outlines, and voices so overridden with static that they're barely even voices anymore. Nothing distinct. But sometimes he dreams of a set of clear, bright blue eyes and a beautiful voice promising freedom.

Freedom was a long way from this place. He couldn't remember what fresh air tasted like.

He'd had an escort once, in the beginning, when he was capable of independent thought. Back when he smiled, and joked, and laughed. He'd tried to make the man smile, too. But the man was an agency robot, and the robot introduced him to the way of the facility. Stoic, blank. Just like the man's face. Just like the walls. The man-bot had stopped coming when he started following past footsteps on his own.

He didn't have a name anymore. He didn't hear voices often, but when he did they never spoke his name. He had a number, from memory. He recited it in his head sometimes, because it was something uniquely his. He didn't know if he could say it out loud, though, because he hadn't opened his mouth and made a sound in a while.

Now, it was time to get up again. He didn't know what the time was, or how he knew, but he knew that he was supposed to get up now. So, mindlessly, he stood up from his white bed in his white room, and he stumbled out into the white hallway when his white door slid open for him.

They were watching him, in the silence. They were always watching him. He couldn't see them, but they could see him.

But before he could make his way to his first sanctioned room of the day-that-might-not-have-been-a-day, he was being interrupted by a voice.

"Chuck?"

Voices never interrupted him in the hallways. Not ever. He only ever heard hazy voices after he'd been dimmed by the shiny needles and he was under the shiny knives. They liked to comment over the bright red. This wasn't one of those voices, so he kept walking.

"Chuck," the voice called again, clear, gentle, from behind him. That word – it was familiar. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly, trying to find out what it was from. "Look at me."

_Save you later_.

It was the same voice, really. A little different, probably because he wasn't dreaming now. He stopped walking, turning to see the speaker as ordered. He was confused. They didn't normally want him to see faces. But he saw her, and it spurred something in his mind he hadn't felt since he couldn't remember.

Black.

She went against everything he knew now. He was used to blank, and white, and indistinction. But this woman was everything but – her clothing was black, lines distinguished, her face showing emotion. And he wasn't used to this. He stepped backwards, away. Definition was foreign to him now.

"Chuck?" she asked again, stepping towards him, blonde hair falling around her face. He could feel her eyes – a clear, bright blue, just like his dreams – tracing his figure in concern. She was worried, he realised, and calling him by a name from before the red, before the white.

She was beautiful – something he'd probably thought back when there was more than red and white. Visions of greens and browns and blues – blues like her eyes – danced in his head, and he shook it to clear it.

Dizzy-making, he realised. Bad idea.

"Chuck!" the woman exclaimed, darting forward in a motion too fast for the white coats – she wasn't one of them. She caught him before he could slump down, and he stared at her hands when they steadied him.

Her touch on his wrists was new. It wasn't freezing like the white coats hands. They were uncomfortable, uncaring. But she was warm, gentle, coaxing. He looked back up to her face after a moment, and stared blankly into her eyes.

Blue.

He hadn't seen anything so beautiful in years. Not since those words in fresh air and red light. He opened his mouth to speak, trying to find his voice after so long, and she watched him sadly, hopeful. After a few moments, he took one arm back from her and pointed to himself.

"X-3-5-8-2-7," he told her slowly, quietly, struggling to get the words out. She shook her head after a moment, biting her pink bottom lip and lifting a warm hand to brush a short curl of his hair from his face. Her eyes looked tortured.

"Chuck," she said to him slowly, waiting to see that he'd gotten the point. Then she pointed back to herself, one hand then taking his. "Sarah."

He frowned, slightly troubled, the name stirring something in his head. He focused on her eyes, using the depths of the blue to drown out the white. She lifted a hand to the side of his face, fingers playing with his hair affectionately.

Affection. He hadn't had that in a long time.

"…Sarah?" he managed after a few moments, and she nodded with a small, barely-there smile, encouraging him. "Are you… here to save me?"

It was all very slowly said, put together with difficulty. She stared at him with sad eyes, but something about the words seemed to brighten her up the slightest bit. He'd matched her with the eyes from his dreams, after all. He remembered her through the haze. She must've really been something.

"Yes, Chuck," she said slowly, softly. "I'm here to save you. I'm sorry I took so long." He stared for a moment before giving her a hesitant smile, which she returned. Cautious as it was, it was the most beautiful thing he could remember seeing.

Then she took him by the hand and led him out of the white.

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**R&R plx?**


End file.
